It was always important for Alex and Patricia Plair to spend time with their six children, now ages 17 to 25.

"We made a commitment that we were going to be involved in their activities and so we just kind of made it a point that their activities would be our activities," Alex Plair said. "So wherever we went, we would take them with us. We took the position that we didn't want to push our children off on anyone and we wanted them to be with us and we with them as much as possible."

Their five oldest children - Melissa, now 26, Alexis, 24; Dana, 22; Amber, 21; and Alex, 19 - graduated from Kalamazoo Central High School. The youngest, 17-year-old Clarissa, is entering her senior year at Kalamazoo Central.

"Staying overnight with (other) children was very, vary rare," said Plair, who worked for years preparing artwork for packaging at Pfizer. He retired from there in 2005.

When the couple's second daughter was born, Patricia Plair left her job at Upjohn to return home to raise the children.

"We had to know the parents," Plair said. "We had to know that the parents were Christian parents, because we needed to know what kind of activities that they might be involved with ...(that those) might be acceptable."

Parents who don't bother to ask or know might do so at their children's detriment, he said.

"The kids that they go to spend time with aren't controlling the environment that they're in," Plair said. "The kids may be OK; the environment may not. You don't know what might be going on, and we didn't want to put them (our children) at risk."